


Moments When My Gaze Goes Vacant

by stoprobbers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Nancy Wheeler-Centric, Past Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Post-Season/Series 02, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, mentions of pretty much everyone else - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:05:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: The sounds of the cafeteria blur and then fade, her eyes lose focus and colors bleed together. For a long moment there is nothing but fuzzy brightness and the cacophonous sounds of high school at lunchtime.





	Moments When My Gaze Goes Vacant

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the many, many bird-centric prompts that have been submitted to me on Tumblr. Basically, there is an artist who paints birds and then [gives his paintings the greatest titles in existence](http://www.mattadrian.com/), every single one of which works as a fic prompt. So first of all, credit to Matt Adrian for the title of this story.
> 
> This prompt ballooned into something much more, a chance for a Nancy character study, a chance for some more Jancy fic. So I took it. 
> 
> If you'd like to read the rest of the Weird Bird Prompt Fics, they're collected in "[Polaroids."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13623048)
> 
> There is some light cursing in this, but nothing I think warrants a teen rating.

1.

Tommy and Carol are talking, Steve is laughing, but all she can think about is Barb. 

Barb in the school hallway. Barb by Steve’s pool. Barb at the bottom of Steve’s stairs, thumb wrapped in a bandage, eyes hidden behind the reflection of her glasses. 

Barb is... somewhere. Somewhere else, somewhere not here. 

Nancy hopes Barb just got mad and went home, though she can’t imagine Mrs. Holland let her play hooky just because they argued. Maybe she drove off for the day, decided to spend some time in another town or maybe even the city. Her own day of selfishness, revenge for Nancy’s selfish night. 

Something in her stomach feels acid and burns. Steve is shoving Carol’s disgusting foot off the table as the redhead and her boyfriend cackle. They sound like birds, the dumb kind that run into windows over and over, never figuring out that they’re just a little off of where the pane has been opened for them. 

Barb is gone. How can Barb just be... gone?

She feels a tingle in the back of her head, the base of her skull, where her hindbrain lives. Turns without thinking to see Jonathan Byers framed in the cafeteria door, shoulders hunched, shaggy hair in his eyes. He looks at her over his shoulder, and she looks steadily back.

Will is gone, too. 

He keeps walking. 

She turns back to the group, her mind churning. The sounds of the cafeteria blur and then fade, her eyes lose focus and colors bleed together. For a long moment there is nothing but fuzzy brightness and the cacophonous sounds of high school at lunchtime.

Then Steve puts a hand on her shoulder and says her name and everything regains its sharpness.

“You okay, Nance?” Steve asks. She blinks at him.

“Fine,” she says.

She’ll call Barb’s house as soon as school is over.

 

2.

It is absurd that it’s only been four days.

In four days she has lost her best friend, survived a brief journey into another dimension, called Jonathan Byers into her bed, slapped her now-maybe-ex-boyfriend, discovered her brother was harboring a telekinetic lab experiment-slash-innocent child in their basement, almost kissed Jonathan on his sofa, fought a monster with him _and_ Steve, and found out her little brother’s best friend had been rescued from the alternate dimension Jonathan _fucking_ Byers had pulled her out of.

She doesn’t know how she feels, just knows it’s not like a 16-year-old girl anymore.

The tear tracks on Jonathan’s face stand out as bright as the ugly cuts and bruises around Steve’s eye, but he is smiling through his sniffles and Mike knocks painfully into her knee in his scramble from the waiting room through the doorway that will take him to Will’s hospital room.

Jonathan’s eyes stay on her as she looks between her mother and father, briefly glances at Steve. Her mother nods, the barest shake of her hair, and then Nancy is on her feet, following.

Jonathan still smells like burned carpet and sweat, there is a fine sheen of the chemical extinguisher on his hair, and the bandage around his left hand swallows the appendage like a mitten. She wants very badly to take his hand in hers again, run her fingers along the cut, feel his thumb curl over her fingers again. Wants to finish what they started, to lean in and see if his lips are as rough as his calluses or if they’re as soft as her imagination.

They are in step until the cry of “Byers!” echoes down the hallway and Jonathan speeds up, ready to defend and protect once more.

His voice echoes down the hallway too. “Guys, guys, be careful!”

She stops just inside the hospital room doorway. Watches the slant of Jonathan’s shoulders as he gazes at his little brother.

Will is pale and his lips are greyish-blue and there are dark circles under his eyes, but he is here. He is here, and Barb is gone.

There is a burning behind her eyes as she fixes her gaze just past Jonathan’s shoulder, but the tears don’t come. Her eyes cross, her brother and his friends become multicolor blobs on a stark white hospital background, Jonathan a massive blurry pillar of dark.

She has to go back to school Monday. She has to walk into the hallway, open her locker, go to class. Barb’s shadow will never fall across her again, she will never tease her about boys as Nancy fetches her jacket, she will never pull up to Nancy’s curb in her cheerful turquoise Volkswagen for a trip to the mall or a sleepover or a ride to school.

Barb will never anything again. Barb is gone. Will is back.

There’s a ringing in her ears until she takes a deep breath, forces her eyes to resolve the shapes in front of her until she can see the individual strands of Jonathan’s hair. It takes a moment for the world to steady under her feet, but when it does she leaves the room.

She feels Jonathan’s eyes on her back, turning just a moment too late for her to see. She keeps her eyes on the tile and walks, one foot in front of the other.

 

3. 

Her head is pounding. If she’s honest it’s been pounding for two days, since she traveled up the Hollands’ front walk and saw the “For Sale” sign in their front yard. But today it’s pounding extra hard, thanks to the _pure fuel_ in the disgusting punch at Tina’s party and the guilt in her bloodstream.

She should drink less, she thinks. She has a terrible habit of being honest when she’s intoxicated.

Jonathan’s eyes search her face. He’s squinting in the late morning sun, his body angled directly into the beam, and it can’t be comfortable but he’s sparing her the agony of having to do with her hangover. For that she is grateful.

She knows he’s done it intentionally. Knows he knows exactly what state she was in the night before. Knows he carried her up her parents’ stairs, laid her in her bed, pulled off her shoes. She remembers the look on his face – concern and something else, not quite sadness. Longing, perhaps.

Knows he took her home, not Steve. Not her _real_ boyfriend. She remembers Steve’s eyes in the bathroom, the hurt in them a mirror of the pain glittering there as they stood behind the gym, not at all hidden behind his drooping hair and the sheen of sweat on his face.

She’s felt sick all morning but her stomach rolls again from the flavor of the lie when Jonathan says, “Yeah, he was really upset. But he was still worried about you.”

She looks down at the cracked pavement of Hawkins High’s parking lot to keep the tears from welling. The splits between faded asphalt blur into fuzzy voids and she tries to remember to breathe.

She fucked up. She’s fucked up. Everything is fucked up. The more she stares through the ground the further away the world feels and she wonders if this what Barb felt, sucked in to the Upside Down.

“Hey, you need to cut yourself some slack, okay,” Jonathan says and it’s like a balm on her burning soul, a salve she doesn’t deserve. What slack is there to cut? It’s all her fault anyway. She keeps her eyes unfocused.

She wishes, sometimes, that she could go back to Steve’s stairway, tell Barb to hold on one moment, kiss Steve goodbye and change everything. It’s selfish; she wants Barb back because she misses her best friend but also because the guilt is eating her alive. Like acid slowly boring holes through all of her organs, through her skin, until she dissolves from the inside out. She feels like a murderer. She doesn’t understand how Steve doesn’t feel that way too.

Jonathan understands. The guilt eats at him too, every time he catches his brother staring off into another world none of them can see.

“Look, people say stupid things when they’re wasted,” Jonathan tries. He wants her to feel better but she doesn't deserve it. She wishes he’d hug her, doesn’t examine that feeling too closely. “Things they don’t mean.”

She meant it. She knows she meant it. The realization is jarring enough to snap her back into focus, pull her back to the present and Jonathan’s worried gaze.

“But that’s the thing. What if I did mean it?”

She wonders if he hears the question under her question. His face is closed, hesitant. She keeps talking to give him the chance to look away. She doesn’t know how she feels when he takes it.

 

4.

She hates when her mom talks about boys giving her butterflies but she has to admit that's exactly what this feels like.

They sleep late because Murray sleeps late, and also because they were up until the grey light of dawn peeked over the horizon and through the thin curtains on the guest room's tiny windows and reminded them they would, in fact, have to get back in the car and drive home and, ideally, not fall asleep at the wheel on the way.

She wakes up with her nose pressed into Jonathan's shoulder, the scent of his skin in her nostrils, and her stomach flips over and over as it sinks in that it was not a dream.

For the first time there is no acid in her gut, no burning feeling of guilt and grief. When he kisses her good morning and runs his hands down her sides she feels light as air.

The terrible awkwardness of breakfast doesn't ended the flipping, just slows it, and even though Jonathan's expression is grim when he doesn't get an answer at home, she isn't worried. Put Mike and Will together and they can convince their mothers of just about anything. She's seen it.

On the drive home she feels triumphant; the Lab is toast and she's wonderfully sore in all the right places. She plays with the hair at the nape of Jonathan's neck as he drives and smiles at him, wide and real, in hopes of getting him to smile back. Thinks about kissing his smile when they're home and reunited with their brothers.

She can feel the tension in his shoulders but she feels righteous, feels proven. She knows when they get back it'll all be fine.

It is not, and the butterflies in her stomach turn to stone.

Jonathan runs through the house in a panic, shouting for his mom and Will. She can't even make a sound as she stares at the snaking drawings covering every inch of every room, the walls, the floor, across the doorways. Distantly, as she walks into the dining room, she wonders about Mike, if he's with Will, with Mrs. Byers. He must be; he was sleeping over, her mom said. He has no reason to lie about that; if they decided to spend the night at Dustin or Lucas's, her mom would know.

She sees the legal pad on the table, final pages torn off, and comes to a stop in front of it. From the angle of the light she thinks she might be able to make out some pen impressions, thinks maybe she can do a rubbing a reveal the clues. The Byers always have crayons around.

Then her eyes lock on the brown cardboard and she can't move them away. Isn't really seeing it, isn't seeing anything at all.

This is her fault. It _has_ to be. Everything had gone smoothly, too smoothly, impossibly smoothly. Dr. Owens must have known from the start it was a set up – he didn't even search her purse. Just led them through the bowels of the lab announcing every nefarious project they have. He was probably planning it even then, coming in to scoop up Will, Mike, Mrs. Byers. Who knows where they're holding them, keeping them. Who knows what he'll want in order to get them back.

She should have known, she should have _guessed_. While they were driving away, while they were talking to Murray, while they were kissing under unfamiliar blankets. She should have _known_ it could never be this easy. She should never have been so cocky.

The clatter of an empty Polaroid cartridge onto the table in front of her breaks into her thoughts, frees her eyes enough to look to the plastic and metal, then up to Jonathan. He's breathing hard, his eyes are wet, and there is panic in every line of his body.

"I don't shoot Polaroid," he says. "Someone else has been here."

There's no anger in his grip as he grabs her hand, pulls her out of the house and back into his car. There is no accusation in his eyes, but there doesn't need to be. She's sure.

This is her fault.

 

5.

She never really liked Charlie Brown, only watched it because Mike loved it when he was little, but she can't help but think of the teacher's trombone voice as her parents stand in front of her, arms crossed and blathering away.

She gets this lecture every time she leaves the house now. _Especially_ when she's leaving with Jonathan.

After two years in a row of supernatural adventures and piles of lies and deception, Ted and Karen Wheeler are _very_ concerned with instilling upon their children the importance of honesty and respect for boundaries.

They're _really_ into boundaries. Just because their perfect 4.0 GPA, never missed a test in her life daughter skipped a couple days of school, ran off with a boy, and fought a couple monsters.

 _Ridiculous_.

Curfew is strict now, 10:30 p.m. on the dot, not a minute later. Her mother's usually waiting in the foyer and more than once her father has opened the front door when she and Jonathan are trying to steal a little more time.

She'd had no idea how many shades of red Jonathan could turn.

She has set chores now; so does Mike. The schedule of their extracurricular activities is taped to the fridge, with each end time noted in red. (And if some of hers are made up, well, her mom hasn't gone so far as to call the school and confirm, and Mrs. Byers doesn't get home from work until 6:30 usually, so she thinks it's worth the risk.)

Once a week she is obligated to babysit Mike and Holly while her parents "reconnect with each other." It's not pleasant to think about, but it's also a three and a half hour window where they're unsupervised and Holly won't tell, so if a girl with short brown hair no one seems to recognize _happens_ to be with the school freak, and they _happen_ to be in the neighborhood at that time, well, that's just a coincidence right?

Her mother flicks a curl over her shoulder as she picks up smoothly from her father's reminders about the obligations of a good citizen to tell her, once again, how important it is for her to be trustworthy.

Her mom is into trust lately, too.

She fixes her gaze between her parents and stares into the middle distance, trying to keep her expression carefully neutral. Nods along with the rise and fall of their voices; their words are meaningless. She never thought of herself as musical but Jonathan says she has a natural ear.

"Nancy!" her mother snaps and it breaks her reverie, brings her back to the moment. "Are you even listening?"

Outside a car horn honks twice.

"Yeah, of course," she says and reaches down to grab her purse from where it's resting against her ankle. She jabs her thumb towards the door. "I gotta go."

"Nancy—"

"We're going to a _movie_ , Mom, we're gonna be late." She widens her eyes, allows them to be saucers of guilelessness. "I will be home by 10:30, I promise, and if the movie lets out late I promise I will call you."

Both of her parents sigh in unison but she doesn't wait for them, just shoulders her purse and goes running out the front door.

Jonathan's got the passenger window rolled down a little and something surprisingly poppy playing on the stereo and a huge grin on his face. She throws herself into the car, into his arms.

He catches her, kisses her without the smile leaving his lips, and her stomach flutters from the butterflies that have taken up permanent residence there in the last couple months.

"So where are we going tonight?" he asks as she settles in beside him, ignoring the seatbelt in favor of snuggling into his side. He always smells a little bit like firewood, and she has no idea how.

"For real or what did I tell my parents?"

"For real," he laughs. "I know we're not going to the movies."

They would, at least sometimes, except there hasn’t been a good movie at the Hawk since Christmas. She supposes they can get away with more in the back seat of his car, but it's nice not to waste the gas in the middle of winter.

"I don't know," she shrugs, and walks her fingers up the inseam of his jeans. "Wherever you think is quietest."

He lets out a little cough as he shifts the car into gear. She flattens her palm against his inner thigh and leaves it there.

"Do you think they're ever going to figure out we haven't actually seen 'A Passage to India,' much less four times?" he wonders as they pull away from the curb.

Her laughter floats out the open window and echoes down the street.


End file.
